The Best Buddhist Writing

We have a built a system we cannot control. This system imposes itself on us, and we have become its slaves and victims. Most of us, in order to have a house, a car, a refrigerator, a TV, and so, must sacrifice our time and our lives in exchange. We are constantly under the pressure of time. In former lives, we could afford three hours for one cup of tea, enjoying the company of our friends in a serene and spiritual atmosphere. We could organize a party to celebrate the blossoming of one orchid in our garden. But today we can no longer afford these things. We say that time is money. We have created a society in which the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, and in which we are so caught up in our own immediate problems that we cannot afford to be aware of what is going on with the rest of the human family or our planet Earth. In my mind, I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over some seeds of grain, unaware that in a few hours they will be killed. - Thich Nhat Hanh, "The World We Have" The most important part of the question is not the meaning of the words themselves but the question mark. We ask unconditionally, "What is this?" without looking for an answer, without expecting an answer. We are questioning for questioning's own sake. This is a practice of questioning, not of answering. We are trying to develop a sensation of openness, of wonderment. As we throw out the question, "What is this?" we are opening ourselves to the moment. There is no place we can rest. We are letting go of our need for knowledge and security, and our body and mind themselves become a question. - Martine Batchelor, "What is this?" True compassion just does what needs to be done because it's the only thing to do - just because it's natural and ordinary, like smoothing your pillow at night. Sometimes the outcome can seem to be a happy one. And often enough we are faced with so-called failure. - Joan Halifax, "The Wooden Puppet and Iron Man" To attribute meaning to an event or to a lifetime of events is an expression of dissatisfaction with things as they are. This is true of even the subtlest attribution. If I wash my dishes as a practice in Zen mindfulness, I indulge my resistance to simply washing them in order to get them clean. I want the washing to be more significant than I think it to be, and so make a spiritual project of it. We want our lives to have meaning, and we complain inwardly and sometimes outwardly as well if what we do and we are appear meaningless. Well, our lives are meaningless in any sense of their constituting a meaningful narrative plot of some sort, and when we strain to make them otherwise, we're merely indulging a story we like to tell ourselves. You and I don't manifest in the universe as meaning, we manifest as living human beings. We're not here to represent something else. We're here in our own right. A human being, or a sink full of soapy dishes for that matter, is complete in itself without the